Page:Japanese plays and playfellows (1901).djvu/81

Rh poetry and Buddhist scriptures. Its chief characteristic is colour. The words are gorgeous, splendid, and even magnificent, as are the costumes." But of their literary value, and how far that value is enhanced or impaired by flying puns and prismatic pillow-words, I cannot judge. The Buddhist authorship is very obvious in the case of "Aoi no Uye," for it will be noticed that, where the miko, or Shintō priestess, failed to exorcise the Demon of Jealousy, the priest of Buddha succeeded. But perhaps, in art of this kind, so innocent of construction, so dependent on allusion, it matters very little that the author should efface himself behind the ideals advocated in his work. The Nō are frankly didactic. Piety, reverence, martial virtues are openly inculcated, though never in such a way as to shock artistic sensibilities. Beauty and taste go far to disguise all structural deficiencies.

But let us not apply to these the standard by which we judge mature drama, demanding situation, character, plot, movement. Rather compare them with the miracle-plays and mysteries of the Chester or Coventry collection, which hover between scriptural tableaux and Gothic farce of a peculiarly gross kind. There is no beauty in those rhymed versions of "The Descent into Hell," "Adam and Eve," or "The Temptation in the Wilderness." The authors had such small sense of decency and congruity, that after a serious attempt to handle a solemn vision in "Pilate's Wife's Dream," you are confronted with this stage-direction: ("Here shall the Devil go to Pilate's wife and draw the curtain, as she lieth in bed, but she, soon after that he is come in, shall make a rueful noise, running on the scaffold with her shirt and her kirtle in her hand, and she shall come before Pilate like a mad woman.") Imagine the